


Eleven Crows & Rhododendrons

by KennaWrites



Category: LEGO Nexo Knights
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Nightmares, Non-Graphic Violence, Other characters are mentioned briefly, Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 11:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17980196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KennaWrites/pseuds/KennaWrites
Summary: So we found our way back home,Let our cuts and bruises heal.While a brand-new war began,One that no one else could feel.Our nights have grown so long.Now we beg for sound advice."let the brokenness be felt'til you reach the other side."Mars" ~ Sleeping At Last.





	Eleven Crows & Rhododendrons

**Author's Note:**

> Eleven crows is a reference to a rhyme for counting crows. "Eleven brings storm."  
> Rhododendrons are flowers that symbolize danger

Jerking awake with a sharp gasp and throwing sweat soaked sheets off of her, Ava wrapped her arms around herself. Shaking and trying to bring her breathing back under control, she glared around the room. Exhaling slowly and closing her eyes, she pressed one hand to her forehead. This shouldn’t still be a problem, she hadn’t even directly been in the situation. She thought angrily and immediately felt ridiculous. Trauma took different forms and affected people in many different ways. Heaven knows that she read enough books that boiled down to that simple fact. Opening her eyes to scan the room, she came to the conclusion that she wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon.

Wrapping a blanket around her shoulders and tucking a book and her notebook under her arm, Ava pushed her door open. Hopefully no one else was awake, she really didn’t want to explain to anyone why she was up at… what time even was it? Whatever, it didn’t matter. It was at least technically morning. Closing the door behind her, she crept down the hallway. The lights along the baseboards gave the Fortrex an eerie glow and she gave in to her irrational urge to avoid the particularly deep looking shadows. She just wanted to find somewhere that wasn’t her own room to read for a little while and then she might try to go back to sleep.

She paused, peering into the common room. Lance and Axl apparently hadn’t made it to their rooms after binge-watching some show that they had missed for a while. So that room wasn’t an option and she didn’t want to answer Merlok’s questions so the control room was out too. Sighing, Ava walked toward the stairwell. It shouldn’t be _that_ cold outside.

She paused outside the garage door, the lights were on. The knights were all asleep, Merlok didn’t need sleep but he didn’t need lights either, Fletch and Izzy didn’t go into the garage, and so that left…. “Robin.” She sighed, nudging the door open.

Robin working on projects at ungodly hours wasn’t new, Robin falling asleep in weird places wasn’t that strange either but she didn’t like this. Robin leaned against the wall from where he was sitting on top of a stack of boxes, he looked like he was asleep.  She debated getting closer to wake him up before she noticed the sword lying beside him. Shoulders slumping, Ava looked back toward the door. She could get one of the knights but….

“Robin.” She called, double checking that she was out of his reach. She trusted Robin but given that he had a sword and with everything that had happened… well sue her for being cautious. “Robin!” Ava tried a little louder and stepped back quickly as he started awake.

Looks like she’d been right to stay out of range. Eyes wide and half-focused, Robin reached for the sword at his side. “It’s just me.” She murmured, watching as he stared at her. “Ava?” He looked down at the sword hilt in his hand and dropped it, pulling back like he’d been burned. “I-I’m sorry.” He muttered, muffling his voice as he tugged his sweater up to cover his face. She shook her head, stepping closer now that he was aware of what was going on. “Do you want me to go get Clay?” She asked and the blond waved his hands frantically. “No, no. He’s sleeping… he needs to do that.” “You know that he’d want to know about this.” Ava climbed onto a tool chest, setting her books aside as she pulled one knee up to her chest. “I don’t want to bother him.” Robin shrugged, looking away from her and picking at a loose thread on his sweater.

They fell silent, Ava debating if she really wanted to ask why he was in the garage as opposed to literally anywhere else in the Fortrex. But then, she looked around the garage, it did have the most hiding places and the Black Knight was in here. “So why are you awake?” Robin asked and she raised an eyebrow at him. “I could ask you the same thing.” “But I asked first.” Robin said, crossing his arms over his chest. Tipping her head to the side, she conceded the point. “Nightmares. I assume the same for you.” She shrugged and Robin winced before nodding.

Drumming her fingers against the tool chest, she let her gaze wander the garage again. “Do you want to talk about it?” She watched Robin’s expression out of the corner of her eye. “Not really.” Robin shrugged, curving his shoulders inward and pulling his knees to his chest. “Fair enough.” She muttered, eyeing her notebook. Maybe she should at least write hers down, if just to come back to it later and mock it.

“Well aren’t we stunning examples of emotional vulnerability?” Robin drawled after a few moments of silence and Ava snorted. “Absolute paradigms.” She agreed, picking her notebook up and starting to doodle swirling lines. Robin sighed, stretching his legs and jumping down from his stack of boxes. She glanced up, raising an eyebrow at him as he walked toward a bench to grab one of the notebooks on the shelf under it.

Robin scrambled up onto the tool chest next to her and Ava almost closed her notebook before realizing that there was nothing of particular interest on the visible pages. Setting it aside for a moment, she offered part of her blanket to Robin who draped it around his shoulders with a smile. Grabbing her notebook, she started stringing together the parts of her… nightmare that she could remember. Next to her, Robin flipped through his notebook, making quiet noises and pausing on some pages.

“Oh here it is.” Robin leaned over suddenly, laying his notebook over hers. Blinking, she sat back a little before taking a closer look at the page. “That’s really interesting.” She hummed, tracing the sketch that was taped inside thoughtfully. “Where’d you find this?” “Merlok’s library ages ago but I had forgotten it and my uh, nightmare made me remember it.” Robin muttered before jumping to his next idea. “Anyway, I haven’t been able to find out much about it. Have you seen anything like it?” Ava considered the name, written in some strange language that she had only found scraps of in Merlok’s memory, as well as the sketch. “It kind of looks like the reconstructions of Dead Lake Fort.” “The what?” Robin stared at her. “The ‘Sinking City’?” She said, recalling the other name for it. “Oh… ick.” Robin wrinkled his nose, sitting back and she rolled her eyes.

Ava grumbled, she really didn’t want to do anything but this other part of her kept screaming that there was work that needed to be done. Next to her, Robin sighed and set his notebook down. He had kept getting up to grab other ones and she expected him to do it again but he just curved his shoulders in. “I suppose we might as well try being emotionally vulnerable now. Especially since it’s just not going away.” She paused, staring at him for a moment. “Uh, sure.”

They stared at each other before Ava buried her face in her hands. “We’re so damn bad at this.” She groaned. “Yeah, we are.” Robin huffed and Ava looked back up at him, he had crossed his arms over his chest and was looking at the ground. She sighed, resigning herself to more awkward silence but she sure as hell didn’t want to break it.

“The capital was destroyed.” She sat up straighter, looking at Robin. “I could hear so many people screaming.” He was staring off at nothing, hands clenching and unclenching in his lap. “They… the knights were there, they didn’t stand a chance but they tried so hard Ava. It didn’t matter in the end though, none of it did. He made an army of the people, he twisted them, infected them with magic.” He stopped, trembling. “Robin?” She asked quietly and he shook his head. “Macy, she tried to talk to them, snap them out of it but it didn’t work. They killed her, their own daughter.” Ava wanted to make him stop but she couldn’t, not when he was speaking faster. “He killed the knights then he turned the magic back, let the people see what they had done before he set his monsters on them. They say this all the time in books but the streets were red, everything was so red. Everyone was dead and it was just me.” Robin stopped, choking on the air. “He looked at me and I swear I heard him, even though he was far away. ‘Live with this, little bird’.” Robin’s shoulders slumped.

Ava looked at her hands for a moment, they flickered burned and bloodstained before she clenched them and they appeared normal. Shaking off her own nightmare, she took a deep breath. “It wasn’t real. Monstrox doesn’t have the power to do that.” She said, looking back at him and keeping her voice level. “Ava, it was so real and it occurred to me that there were so many times that it could have really been like that. Maybe not just like that but close enough. Everyone was gone, Merlok, Macy, Clay, Dad….” There were tears dripping down Robin’s face she realized. “Even you Ava, the Fortrex fell first. He went for you first.” “That’s enough.” She snapped, her own voice trembling. She could hear Robin’s teeth click together as he shut his mouth. Shaking her head, she held her arms out.

Ending up with an armful of tearful blond wasn’t that much of a surprise. She knew what she was getting into. “We’re alive. Everyone is still here.” She murmured, glaring out over the quiet garage and damning the person responsible for this. Robin’s fists balled against her back and she inhaled slowly. “Should we go check on them? Axl and Lance were sleeping in the common room.” She paused then added. “I know you don’t want to wake Clay up but he wouldn’t mind.” “I don’t want to bother anyone.” Robin muttered, voice muffled. “Oh trust me, he’d _want_ to be bothered about this Robin.” Ava sighed, letting the steady hum of the Fortrex wash over her for a moment.

 “Who’d want to be bothered?” Ava stiffened, glaring toward the door. Robin sat straight up, letting go of her and twisting to look.

Standing in the doorway and looking distinctly sleep ruffled, Clay squinted at them. “Don’t worry about it.” Robin sniffed, swiping his arm across his face. “Ignore him, he’s being ridiculous.” Ava muttered and Clay walked toward them, rubbing his eyes. “So what happened?” He asked before stopping and looking at Robin. “Oh…. You could have come and found me.” Clay sighed, Robin ducked his head with a shrug. “Just talk to me sometime? Both of you.” Clay fixed them with a look before pulling Robin then Ava into a quick hug. “Since I know that neither of you are going back to sleep, let’s go make hot chocolate and watch those ridiculous videos you two enjoy so much.” He hummed and Ava rolled her eyes. “That’s not a cure for nightmares.” She huffed, jumping off the tool chest. “No but it makes things a little better and some days that’s all we can ask for.” Clay smiled, folding his arms as Ava gathered up her blanket and books and Robin put his notebooks away.

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to post this despite not being super impressed with how it turned out. I've been dealing with some stuff that I didn't think bothered me but apparently it did. Whatever, not here for that. Anyway I should be a little more active here in about a week because it's Spring Break!


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